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project: earth

How can we think with our hands? Where are possible connections between the physical and the virtual of an object? How can we make abstract thoughts tangible? Focussing on the hand-mind connection, EARTH enabled users to create philosophy with their hands.

Clay as a tactile and natural medium was used as an interface with two neural networks. The user's hands formed the clay and a neural network tried to identify the shape of it. This served as a seed for another neural network trained on metaphysics to generate new philosophical quotes in real-time.

The installation took the users through the Uncanny Valley of a deep neural network dreaming about life and existence: An extension of their mind, based on the simple input of forming a piece of clay with their bare hands. The resulting quotes were both non-sensical and insightful at the same time. Here a few examples: